Campaign for Document Freedom

Why Document Freedom?

We live in an age in which paper documents increasingly get replaced by electronic records. Document freedom is fundamental for your documents to outlive the application you are currently using and allows you to choose and change applications freely.

"Previous proprietary document formats have become difficult or impossible to read within little more than a decade. There is no reason to believe this trend will not continue if allowed so to do. Without open standards for our documents we are likely to inflict a 'digital dark-age' on our descendants when they discover that they are unable to read any of the sources for their history, such as Government records, acts of Parliament, property title deeds, scientific research papers, and family histories. They will not forgive us if we fail to act to protect them now, but instead allow another generation of poorly specified proprietary standards to become widely adopted." - from UKUUG press release

Document Freedom and Democracy

Electronic records kept today include records of your government, such as tax and legal records or minutes of parliamentary proceedings. Making sure that such records remain in the control of the government is essential for a functioning democracy. The same is true for all interactions between citizens and their government, which should never depend on monopolies or on the proprietary product of a single company.

How to achieve Document Freedom?

Make a stand by saving your documents in ODF today. If your application does not support ODF, get one of the ODF supported applications like OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiWord, etc

ODF vs OOXML

Here's a quotation for the ages, from an Alex Brown comment on Andrew Updegrove's Standards Blog (scroll down) asking Brown if he'd agree that ODF was cleaner than OOXML:

"I'd go with that. I think ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF 1.0) can be compared to a neat house built on good foundations which is not finished; 29500 (OOXML) is a baroque cliffside castle replete with toppling towers, secret passages and ghosts: it is all too finished."

Now he tells us. Still, better late than never. And I couldn't have put it better myself. But if it's that bad, why is it an ISO standard? A standard with secret passages is a standard no one can implement unless they have a map and the keys. We don't have either. Only Microsoft does. Thanks, ISO, for this little anticompetitive joke. [...]

The public cares about ODF, because it realizes it will impact every one of us directly, and we see the obvious, that OOXML is a spoiler. This has nothing to do with market share.

Courtesy: PJ @ groklaw

Events

Candle Light Vigil for Document Freedom

The Candle light vigil demands India to appeal ISO approval of ooxml based on its comments and no vote. We also demand the Department of IT to draft a clear national policy for the use of Free standards for data storage.

This programme is planned as a starting point for various events & awareness campaigns on Document freedom.

When: 15 April 2008, 6pm

Where: Near Corporation Circle, In front of the Townhall, Bengaluru

We request all user to

1. do not send attachments in proprietary formats like .doc, .xls, .ppt
2. We request people not to pollute their friends computers and the internet with unethically encoded documents.
3. inform the users that they do not have right to decode the documents they themselves have written, if they use proprietary software
4. distribute open office cds, containing apps with source code for windows.
5. distribute live cds.

Contacts:

• pravi dot a at gmail dot com 998six34856five
• anivar at movingrepublic dot org 080-234three56zero6 /944nine0099zero8
• Vikram Vincent vincentvikram at swatantra dot org -- 9448810822

Participate in online discussions at fsug-bangalore mailing list

On Newspapers

• Techies protest proprietary standards; seek policy- The Hindu - April 15
• Computer professionals hold candlelight vigil against proprietary standards -The Hindu- April 16th

Blogs/Online News

• Protest in front of Town Hall for Document Freedom
• OOXML Protests Are Back, Lots of ODF FUD Seen Abound (Updatedx2)

Photos

File:Candle in darkness.jpg
File:No backdoor standards.jpg File:Ooxml banana standard.jpg

• by Kushal Das
• by Renuka Prasad

On Barcamp Bangalore 6

Anivar Aravind announced a session on Technopolitrics:The ooxml way , An Observation on ISO's banana standard on Barcamp Bangalore 6

When: 19th and 20th April

Where: BCB6 Summer Edition, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Open Letter to Wipro, Infosys and TCS

• FOSSMeet Team, NIT Calicut

Pictures of Open Letter on College Notice Board

File:DSC01515.JPG

File:DSC01516.JPG

File:DSC01517.JPG

Open Document Format as the default Document standard for Institution

• As a part of Document Freedom Day 2008, Fossers of Vidya, the Free Software Users Group, [Thrissur/VAST Vidya Academy] submitted a request to Principal of the institution requesting ODF as the institute standard. The request suggested for making ODF the default standard for all academic requirements such as project submission and seminar presentation making and for all institutional document archiving.
  • Fossers of Vidya's Appeal, Vidya Vidya Academy of Science and Technology, Thrissur

Resources

• Say No to Microsoft Offfff---ice broken standard
• Document Freedom Day

Banners/Posters/Slogans

• Slogans - odt pdf

Articles/Blogs

India Specific

• India's comments on BRM to ISO
• Policy challenges for “Open Standards”
• Microsoft files complaint on OOXML vote to apex office and Ministry of Consumer Affairs
• is ooxml really open?
• India votes NO for OOXML

International

• Alex Brown: OOXML is like a baroque castle with secret passages and crumbling towers
• Demonstration against OOXML
• UKUUG seeks legal advice on BSI's OOXML decision
• Six questions to national standardisation bodies
• FSFE concerned about quality of standardisation process
• EU investigating OOXML vote
• Microsoft's ISO win may worsen antitrust woes
• DE: German Foreign Ministry will not use ISO OOXML

Campaigners

1. Praveen A
2. Anivar Aravind
3. Renuka Prasad B
4. Vidya Shankar M H
5. Baswaraj Ningashetty
6. Chandra shekar B
7. Chandrashekar B H
8. Soumya M D
9. Kishore A
10. Sharath Shashidhar
11. Jay Kiran
12. Pradeep
13. Nischal
14. Subramanyam
15. Keshav
16. Komal Saraff
17. Kadambini
18. Jayatheertha
19. hitha
20. Manjunath Maruthi
21. Farahn khan
22. Imtiyaz Quazi
23. ArunKumar N Shiva
24. Muneeb Ahmed
25. Sudheendra ghorpade
26. Narash J
27. Nagaraja y
28. Rajaram K
29. Venkatram G R
30. RadhaKrishna
31. Raghwvendra Singh
32. Nabakamal Das
33. Ramesh Sheelvant
34. Shah Naresh
35. Shah Bhavesh
36. Mahipal Kamanchi
37. Reddy Krishna
38. Sandeep Harkude
39. Srinath P
40. Shumba Rai
41. Sony KOyalkar
42. Mangala K S
43. Vinayka Hampiholli
44. Vijaya
45. Sushmitha
46. Suhas D P
47. Aman Kumar
48. Ali Azgar
49. Manali mankad
50. chandrashekar
51. Chandan C
52. Udaya krishana P
53. Rashmi S Bhat
54. Shwetha G
55. Pavan Kumar
56. Ashok Kumar 17:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
57. Shyam k
58. Chandrasekharan Nair S
59. BaijuMuthukadan 06:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)